Happy New Year

While the IIT alumni have always been benevolent in terms of donating substantial sums to their alma mater, these donations were primarily meant for creating or renovating infrastructure. There is a welcome departure this time as the January 1, 08 edition of the Times of India reports,"The batch of 1982 of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay had something to gift their alma mater for the new year. On Sunday, the alumni handed over a cheque of Rs 4 crore to the premier engineering institute. The money will be used to bring in more talent into the faculty. With the interest earned on the corpus, every year 25 incoming faculty members at IIT-B will be offered a bonus of Rs 1 lakh for three years."

Kudos to the IITB batch of 1982. However, there need to be more initiatives of this nature preferably with the involvement of the rich Indian corporates. For our institutions to be truly great, they need to attract the best from across the world. And this requires resources, which only private participation can ensure.